“Will I see you again?”
“Maybe,” she said, “there’s a guy I… I’ll invite you to the wedding.”
Ophelia grinned. “I would love that.”
“Just don’t bring your brother as your plus one,” Harlow said and pointed to the engagement ring. “Or your fiancé.”
Both of them stood.
Ophelia laughed. “God, can you just imagine?”
She didn’t want to. Harlow couldn’t think of anything worse than seeing Hagan again, much less having him in a room with Rupert and Ryske too. It would be awful.
They went to the door. Harlow opened it, less concerned with security seeing her now that she’d been there a few times. “Thank you, Ophelia,” she said. “You were there… when I needed someone. You were there.”
Smiling, Ophelia cupped her jaw and bowed to kiss each of her cheeks. “Take care, Harlow.”
She didn’t expect to feel so emotional when she left Ophelia’s, but in the elevator, Harlow had to swipe away a few tears. That was it. The life she’d thought she was embarking on was over, and she had to return to the old one… which was exactly as she’d left it.
18
Rupert had been understanding about her need for time.
Harlow had returned to her parents, moved back into her childhood bedroom, and spent some time trying to remember who she’d been before deciding a challenging life of adventure might be fun.
There wasn’t much time for her to reach any conclusions. On her fifth night home, while she was running down the stairs, the sound of her sister’s laugh in the dining room made her pause with a hand on the bannister. That was her sister’s flirtatious laugh.
Lena loved male attention; but she was coy about it in public, especially at her parents’ dinner table. At least, she usually was.
Her mom, Jean, was the next person Harlow heard. “Her birth name was Harlean,” Jean explained. “So, when we were trying to pick a name for our second daughter, Lena seemed to fit.”
Her mom loved to tell people how all of them, mother and both daughters, were named after Jean Harlow.
Leaving the bottom stair, Harlow tried to figure out who could be at dinner and ignorant to the fact that the three women were named after the same starlet. Rupert had come to dinner every night since she’d been home, but he’d heard the story probably as many times as she had.
On entering the dining room, the question of whether she should’ve dressed for dinner was on her lips. It got no further when she noticed their guest. It was Ryske, sitting there right next to her place at the table like he had some right to be there.
Rupert always sat to her left, and there was Ryske to her right. Being stuck in between them would be some version of hell. Harlow didn’t want him there at all; but if she had to tolerate him, she’d rather do it from a distance, not from a position between him and Rupert.
Though it was instinct to demand an explanation about why he was here, or how he’d bagged himself a seat at the family table, she did some quick math. Ryske was a con man. He must have conned her family. That was the only explanation for his presence.
The last thing Harlow wanted to do was draw attention to the fact that she’d brought a criminal into their midst. Ryske wouldn’t have known the Sweetings existed if it wasn’t for her. So, whatever story he’d fed to whomever, he only wanted to be here because of her. To hurt or to help… though she’d assume it was the first.
Her deduction led to one conclusion: she had to play it straight and figure out what Ryske wanted as soon as she could get him alone.
“Fuck,” Harlow murmured without realizing she’d said the word aloud until her sister gasped.
“Harlow!” her mother exclaimed, pausing in her pouring of the wine. “What has gotten into you? I am sorry, Mr. Ryske…” Ryske was shaking his head, his expression blank and forgiving. “I assure you we are not usually so uncouth.”
“It’s fine, really,” he said, holding up a hand to the wine. “That’s plenty for me, Jean. I wouldn’t want to end up being uncouth myself.”
A series of polite titters went around the table. Her mother’s smile fell when Harlow moved into the room. The two of them made eye contact, and Jean made sure to convey her disapproval with a glare. Harlow got that her mother was unhappy; she didn’t have to punctuate that fact with the stink eye.
“I believe my eldest daughter has already broken that barrier,” Jean said.
Harlow didn’t switch her glare on until her mother looked away. Hers was reserved for their guest, rather than her family. Fixated on him, she wished she had the power to cause him pain. Whatever game Ryske was playing, Harlow wasn’t going to let him get away with it.
She touched her hair. “I haven’t done my hair,” Harlow said. “I worried I would embarrass the family.”
The glint in Ryske’s eye betrayed his teasing mood. “You look beautiful,” he said, like he was just being polite.
“Yes, you do,” Rupert said, playing catch up.
Given that they had a captive audience, Harlow dispensed with their usual cheek kiss and instead bowed to press her mouth to Rupert’s, pushing deeper to kiss him like she hadn’t since before their break-up.
“Harlow!” Jean said again, forcing her to break from the kiss.
Rupert was slightly flabbergasted and had to clear his throat more than once to recover. Rather than checking on the man she’d taken by surprise, Harlow made eye contact with Ryske. Sliding her hand across Rupert’s shoulders, maintaining contact as long as she could, Harlow descended into her chair between the men.
“This is a passionate family,” Ryske said, sharing a smile with her parents, who were trying to return it though they seemed mortified by her actions. “Are you dishing those out to all the guests, Miss Sweeting?”
Startled that he’d look her in the eye and ask that here, Harlow did her best to stay proud. “Ask again and I’ll give you something really special,” she hissed.
His lips just curled. “I’ll take anything you’re offering.”
Opening her mouth with intentions of retorting, Harlow was cut off by her mother. “Harlow Abigail Sweeting, your attitude has been atrocious. You really have to keep yourself in check.”
Spreading a tight smile to her lips, she calmed herself. “I will, mom. I apologize… I just didn’t know we were having guests for dinner.”
Lena leaned toward the middle of the table. “Mr. Ryske is a millionaire.”
That almost made her laugh. Holding her hilarity in, she instead raised her brows. “Is he?” Harlow asked and turned to see him nodding in a humble way that she wasn’t buying. “Isn’t that nice, Mr. Ryske? A real life millionaire… not a billionaire? That was just, what? A stretch too far for you?”
“Harlow!”
Ryske’s lips quirked. “You’re a feisty one.”
“Oh, Mr. Ryske, you have no idea,” she said, stealing a baby carrot from his plate.
“What has gotten into you?” Jean chastised. “Leave the man’s plate alone.”
“He’s a millionaire, mom. He can afford his own carrots,” she said, linking her fingers over her plate with her elbows on the table. “Which I suppose brings me to the question of just what he’s doing at our dinner table… Times rough, Mr. Ryske? No rooms at the Hilton?”
“I believe the hotel in your town is called the Meadowbank,” he said. “It’s a cozy place… quaint.”
“Quaint,” she said, bobbing her head in a nod. “In this context, isn’t that some sort of condescending synonym for small?” Letting her eyes roll upward, she pretended to ponder. “It’s a word that’s not used enough. We should bring it back, shouldn’t we? How would we do that?” She wrinkled her nose. “Hmm… Given tonight, I’d say it’s a quaint world…”
The game let her get in a discreet jab against her former love.
He didn’t let it dent his monumental confidence. “I’d tell you not to sweat the quaint stuff,” Ryske said, understanding that she’d replac
ed the word small with the word quaint.
“It’s just a quaint wonder, isn’t it?”
That her ex just happened to saunter into her family dining room and snag a seat beside her, this was no coincidence. Letting him know she was onto him was less important than conveying her displeasure with his tactics.
Still, no contrition from Ryske. “Be grateful for quaint blessings, Miss Sweeting,” he said, spearing a carrot. “I am.”
“Or quaint mercies,” she said, plucking the carrot from his fork before it could reach his lips.
“Mine or yours? I can’t say I’m fond of quaint talk.”
“Mm,” she said, exaggerating her agreement as she chewed. “Nor am I of quaint packages.”
His brows rose as he struggled to hold back his smile. “Not those you find in the quaint hours.”
This time he speared a carrot from her plate with his fork. “You know it’s a wonder you ever found our quaint town,” Harlow said. “Such a big frog in this quaint pond.”
He shook his head. “I’m just a quaint cog,” he said and winked as he took the carrot from the fork with his teeth.
Damn her, but she smiled too. In her anger, it was easy to forget how smart and quick he was. “I… I don’t understand,” Lena said.
Harlow noticed her sister’s confusion. Her parents were just as taken aback, she didn’t even dare turn to Rupert.
“So, you’re working together,” Harlow said to her father. “Mr. Ryske is dangling the prospect of his business in front of you and inviting him home to your family is your way of soliciting it?” No one got a chance to respond. “Tell me, have you seen evidence of his great fortune? I’d be fascinated to know where someone such as him stashes his vast means.”
“Harlow,” her father said and tried to smile at Ryske. “We shouldn’t talk business at the dinner table.”
“No,” she said. “Business and love are incompatible bedfellows…” More confusion. “Just something a dear friend said to me once… And, there’s just so much love at our table, don’t you think?”
Lena laughed. “Harlow, you are in such an odd mood.”
“You are,” Rupert said, putting a hand over hers. “Are you feeling ill?”
“I am sorry about my daughter, Mr. Ryske,” Jean said.
“I like a woman who speaks her mind,” Ryske said. “Don’t apologize for her on my account.”
Rupert drew her face around so he could explore her expression with concern. His tender caress made her smile. Her ex-fiancé was sweet, far different from the other ex Harlow had at the table.
Ryske’s mocking irritated her, so she gave him a swift, hard kick under the table. Though it was probably heard by others, Ryske didn’t react, so no one else did.
“I don’t see a wedding ring,” Lena said. “Do you have a girlfriend, Mr. Ryske?”
“Yes,” Harlow said, picking up her water glass that was next to the wine she was in the habit of ignoring. Turning to him, she acted enraptured. “Please, Mr. Ryske, do tell.” She pointed her glass across the table to Lena who was seated opposite Ryske. “My sister, Lena, has aspirations to be married before she’s twenty-five and she just turned twenty-two. She’s looking for candidates… and you’re rich, so she doesn’t have to care whether or not you treat her right.”
Lena laughed, but her mom hissed at her again. “Harlow.”
Ryske carried on, without acknowledging Jean’s displeasure. “Flattering as that is,” he said. “I am spoken for.”
In a faux pout, Lena appeared disappointed, but just for a second. It never took her little sister long to bounce back.
“Yes,” her father said. “That is how Mr. Ryske finds himself in our midst.”
“Yes,” Ryske said. “I’m looking for property in the area.”
“Oh,” Jean said. “Your girlfriend, or, uh… partner would like to move?”
Always so concerned with being modern and not offending anyone, her mom often made an idiot of herself when she tried to be PC.
This time, Harlow had to fight the impulse not to roll her eyes. “He’s not gay, mom,” she said, around the food in her mouth.
Jean blushed and Lena laughed.
“How do you know?” Ryske asked.
Harlow kept eating and talking. “Because gay men tend to be polite and well-presented. You’re rude and haven’t had that mop cut for months.”
“Harlow,” her mother hissed.
It was a wonder that Jean kept drawing attention to her rudeness with the hissing that didn’t prevent Harlow from doing it.
“My barber is out of town,” Ryske said.
“I’ll bet,” Harlow said, cutting into her chicken. “Wait…” Putting her flatware down, she picked up her napkin to dab at the corners of her mouth before turning to him. “I do know who you are.”
His brow arched. “You do?”
“Yes, I do,” she said. “I know your fiancée.”
That revelation made Ryske dubious. His doubt wouldn’t be obvious to anyone else at the table, but she could see that he was intrigued about where she was going with this. “My fiancée?”
She nodded. “Ophelia Hagan.”
“Oh,” Rupert said as soon as she’d spoken. Harlow got little chance to read Ryske’s reaction because instinct made her turn to the man at her other side. “You introduced me to her brother.”
A prickle of something went across her shoulders, it linked to the sickness that churned her belly. “I did.”
Harlow couldn’t even focus enough to do anything about Ryske’s hand when it curled over her knee. She wanted to think he was trying to comfort her but knew better than to assume something positive about him.
“You never did tell me what went on between you two,” Rupert said. “There seemed to be an… energy between you.”
“That’s one way to put it,” she said, reaching for the wine.
The moment the liquid met her tongue a swamp of emotion hit her. Terror and disgust clashed with grief and anger. She had no choice except to swallow. At the same time, Harlow surged to her feet and without looking at anyone or acknowledging the calls that followed her, she dashed from the table and out of the room.
19
Running into the downstairs powder room, Harlow flung the door out of her way and heaved over the toilet. Nothing came out, but her body was overwhelmed with the urge to dispel what had just assaulted it. The trouble was, it wasn’t so easy to exile emotion.
Standing up, she leaned against the wall and tried to calm herself. Sweat beaded on her brow. She was shaking like after an adrenaline shot. Having had a lot of experience with that recently, she recognized the sensation.
“Harlow?”
Opening her eyes, she saw Rupert coming into the room, pushing the door over behind him without closing it.
“I’m okay,” she said, going to the sink to splash water on her face.
“You don’t seem okay,” he said, stopping beside her. “You’re erratic, you have mood swings, and now this… You would tell me, wouldn’t you?”
Standing up, she snagged the towel that hung on the wall by the sink. “Tell you what?”
“I’m saying,” he said, making eye contact with her reflection. “It would be okay… I’d accept it.”
“Accept what?” she asked, hanging up the towel again. “Rupert, I don’t—”
“You said you’d been with someone… in the city. You said you were with another man.”
Yeah, and that man was sitting in the dining room, which set her on edge. “Why are you…”
His gaze dropped and she realized he was looking at her stomach. “We can raise him or her together… We can be a family. I don’t want you to think you have to hide anything from me.”
Shocked, Harlow was too dumbfounded to react with anything other than incredulity. “You can’t be serious,” she said, turning to face him, holding up both palms. “Let’s just forget we had this conversation.”
Leaving him in the bathroom, she
chose to go into the kitchen instead of the dining room. Filling a glass from the faucet, she took a sip and then crouched to retrieve a small wash cloth from beneath the sink where the medical supplies were kept.
When she closed the cabinet door, Harlow was surprised to see a pair of legs next to her. “Something you want to tell me, Trinket?”
“God, you’re like a creeper,” she said, standing up to run the cold water over the wash cloth. “What are you even doing in here?”
“Told them I was going for a smoke.”
“You don’t smoke,” she said, wringing the water out of the wash cloth.
His hand crept onto her belly. “They don’t know that.”
She slapped at his hand. “Stop touching me.”
“You know I wouldn’t let him have you,” he said. “You do know that, right? Both of you are mine.”
Turning her eyes to the ceiling, she released a breath to the count of five. “I don’t even want to know how you overheard us in there,” she grumbled and then pinned a side glare on him. “And, you seem to have missed a few sex ed classes. You can’t actually get a woman pregnant with oral. And you have never ejaculated anywhere near my cervix.”
Taking the wash cloth from her, he squeezed out the excess liquid and leaned in while folding it in to a long rectangle. “Something I’m happy to change this very minute.”
Piling her hair onto the top of her head, she held it there with both hands and turned to face him when he pressed the cool, damp cloth to the back of her neck. “Because that’s what my parents want to find in their kitchen? Their millionaire, engaged, prospective client, screwing the daughter they’re a day away from committing.”
“They’re not a day away from committing you,” he said, picking up a piece of her hair and slipping it under her thumb before adjusting his hold. His hands were curled around either side of her neck with his fingers supporting the washcloth at the nape. “Your parents have a beautiful home.”
“What are you doing here, Ryske?” she asked, tired and stiff. Rocking her head side to side, she didn’t even fight against her eyes closing. “You want something and I won’t let you dupe my family. I won’t.”
Go It Alone (A Go Novel Book 2) Page 15
